Desert Flowers

by Paul Pen

  “See? In a screaming battle, we win. So you don’t need to be afraid to come in.”

  The twins kissed her on the cheeks.

  “Does one of us have to hide?”

  “No, girls. He won’t see you.”

  “But what if he sees us both together? Maybe he’ll be the one who’s scared!”

  “Exactly. Let him be scared,” Rose said.

  She let the girls laugh a little longer. She savored their happiness, the warmth of their bodies. Then she clapped her hands in the air.

  “Right, come on. Inside.”

  The twins ran into the house, making the boards vibrate all along the porch.

  “Wash your hands!” Rose yelled.

  She propelled herself up with her heels against the step. She tried to hang the door back on its hinges, but it was impossible. In the end, she moved the entire frame aside. She left it resting against one side of the porch swing where Edelweiss had so often sat to play her guitar at sundown. The basket of cactus flowers the twins had collected yesterday was now resting on the seat. It seemed as though that had happened a long time ago. She thought about returning them to the refrigerator, but when she inspected the flowers under the porch light, she found that they’d withered. She smelled them. They reeked.

  Iris was pacing from one side of the kitchen to the other, her footsteps tracing a figure eight. Each time she passed in front of the oven, she was enveloped in a cloud of heat that smelled like toast, cheese, and beans.

  “Would you stop?” Dad asked.

  He pulled out two chairs for the twins to sit on. Melissa and her stone occupied their usual position at the table. Mom came into the kitchen carrying the basket of flowers. She tipped it into the trash can, hitting it on the side to make sure all the contents went in.

  “Nooo!” yelled Daisy and Dahlia.

  “They’ve gone bad. We’ll pick more another day.”

  “Tomorrow!”

  “Will you tell me whether Rick’s OK?” Iris searched out the face of her mother, who peered inside the oven without replying. Dad also avoided eye contact, rummaging for something in the fridge. “Is he going to die?”

  Mom slammed the oven door shut. “You’re going to frighten your sisters.” She used the volume of a whisper, but the tone was as if she were shouting.

  “We’d rather he was dead,” Dahlia said.

  “We’d rather he was dead,” Daisy repeated. “He frightens us.”

  “He frightens us.”

  Iris took a fistful of flowers from the trash. She spread them over the table, in front of the little girls.

  “Your flowers are dead.”

  Mom elbowed her aside and swept the petals off the table with the side of her hand.

  Dad took Iris to the kitchen doorway. “That boy’s none of your business.”

  “Who are you to decide what’s my business and what isn’t?”

  “We’re your parents.” Mom joined the conversation. “Doesn’t that count for anything?”

  Iris didn’t like the exchange of looks between them. She held a hand to her throat to contain her anguish.

  “He’s dead,” she sobbed. “I saw it in your eyes, he’s dead.”

  “How can he be dead? Didn’t you just hear him scream?”

  The twins spoke from the table.

  “The vultures are going to eat him.”

  “The vultures are going to eat him.”

  “He’s not dead! Melissa, do me a favor. Entertain those girls,” Dad ordered. Then he grabbed Iris by the wrist and spoke very close to her face. “But he deserves to be. That bastard attacked your mother.” He gestured at her with his thumb. “He fired at her with the shotgun he took from our own truck. The truck we let him sleep in. That’s what we got for being good to him.”

  “So you had to run him over?”

  Dad’s nostrils opened wider than usual.

  “What did you want me to do?” he snorted. “Tell me, what should I do when I see a stranger running away from my house, where my daughters are, carrying a shotgun?”

  “He wasn’t carrying it, Dad. When you arrived he’d thrown it away.”

  He squeezed her wrist with more force. “All right, well, next time a stranger attacks your mother, I’ll let him go. Even better, I’ll give him all our money.” Dad raised the volume of his voice with each syllable. “He can take whatever he wants. My daughters, if necessary. I’ll give him the key to the truck and load the shotgun myself so he can shoot us all if it’s what he wants!”

  Iris was motionless. She didn’t even dare wipe the droplets of saliva from her face. The twins burst into tears. Mom swatted at Dad before going to them.

  “Don’t worry, girls, it’s all right. No one’s going to hurt you.”

  From the table Mom turned her head, giving Dad and Iris a scolding look that disarmed him.

  “I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “All of you, I’m sorry. But I was scared, too. You can’t imagine the things that ran through my mind when I saw him running like that. Covered in blood.”

  “Why were you coming back?” Iris asked.

  “Huh?” Dad blinked several times.

  “Why were you coming back? You’d gone to work.”

  “Why was I coming back?”

  Iris nodded. Her question was clear.

  “Because . . .” Dad looked toward the table. “Because of your mother. She told me to . . .”

  “He forgot some money he had to take to Socorro.” Mom separated herself from the twins. She took the jar of money from the shelf and removed a bill. She handed it to Dad. “Don’t you forget it tomorrow.”

  Dad put it in his pocket without looking at Iris.

  “Shouldn’t we call the police?” Iris asked. “Someone. An ambulance.”

  He held his arms out to the sides, indicating the whole kitchen. “With what telephone?”

  “And what if we take him? We’ll reach the hospital before midnight.”

  “Honey”—he took her by the shoulders—“your mother and I have the situation under control. When I get to the gas station tomorrow, I’ll call from there. The police, ambulance, or whoever will come and take him away. It’s not an emergency. Your mother’s done everything she can for him. The kid’s OK. Hurt, but OK. It’s not like we want a young man to die in our home.”

  Mom let a hand drop onto the table.

  “Can you all stop?”

  The twins trembled, gripping her.

  “He doesn’t scare me,” Melissa said. “But I want my bedroom. I have to organize my stones.”

  “Melissa, please . . .”

  Mom gave a deep sigh. The kitchen fell silent. The refrigerator motor kicked in. Melissa whispered in her rock’s ear.

  The scream came from above as if a thunderbolt had hit the kitchen.

  “Help!”

  Iris’s heart stopped when she heard Rick’s voice. Then it thumped wildly.

  “Help!”

  The twins gave a start in their chairs, then held on to Mom. She started yelling as if it were a game. She smiled at the girls, encouraging them to join in. The three of them yelled over Rick’s screams for help. Melissa hunched her shoulders at the outburst. Iris tried to run to him, but Dad stopped her, making a barrier with his arms.

  “You stay here.”

  “Come yell with us,” said Mom, encouraging the twins to shout even louder.

  Iris covered her face with her hands and shook her head. She resumed her pacing.

  “Please!” Rick’s voice sounded broken. “Help!”

  Daisy and Dahlia screamed a letter u.

  Elmer needed just three steps to climb the staircase.

  “Help!”

  He took the bedroom key from his pocket.

  The draft coming in through the room’s window was not enough to eliminate the smell of Rick’s wounds, of his bruised flesh. Rick took the opportunity while the door was open to scream louder.

  “Help!”

  “Shut up.”

  Th
e boy was breathing through clenched teeth, saliva bubbling at the corners of his lips.

  “Do not scream again.” Elmer aimed a finger at him that was so tense he could have driven it into him.

  Rick narrowed his eyes. He clenched his jaw. “Help!”

  The scream ended in a snort that sounded painful. Elmer let his fist fall on the kid’s stomach. The crunch repulsed him. He shook his hand to free himself of the feeling.

  “Don’t make me do these things,” he said. “I don’t know how to do these things.”

  Rick coughed. He was choking on blood or saliva.

  “But don’t mess with my daughters.” Elmer wiped the kid’s mouth with a bandage. “Don’t try to do stupid things like call for help when we’re in the kitchen with them. There are two very young girls down there. Think about them.”

  “What’re you going to do with me?”

  “I don’t know.” He threw the dirty bandage into the bucket, on top of the broken glass. “I honestly don’t know.”

  Rick closed his eyes. The springs squeaked under his body with each spasm.

  Elmer dried his tears. “Try not to cry,” he said. “Be a man.”

  But Rick didn’t hold back. He cried in silence, sucking in snot that he had no other way to remove. His suffering moved Elmer to pity, it reminded him of the moments in his life when he had cried in the same way. He rummaged through the boxes of medication on the bedside table, by the bandages and pitcher of water. He found the Dormepam that Rose took at certain times and took out two. Rick didn’t cooperate when he tried to administer them, continuing to sob while Elmer forced his fingers between his lips until he felt a tongue rough like the skin of an elbow.

  “They’ll help you stop thinking.”

  When Elmer held the rim of the glass to his mouth, Rick eagerly trapped it in his teeth. He absorbed more than drank the water.

  “Let’s see if they stop you from wanting to scream and scare my girls.”

  Elmer tried to return the glass to the bedside table, but there was no space among the jumble of medicine leaflets and boxes that he’d created. He ended up leaving it on the shelf where the rocks were, on the brown folder. Then he left the room.

  Before closing the door, Rick said something from the bed.

  “I just want to tell my mother . . .” he whispered into the darkness. “So she knows I found her baby.”

  Melissa knew how each floorboard in her room creaked. Even sitting at the kitchen table, she could visualize Dad’s movements over their heads, inside the bedroom. She knew that he’d positioned himself next to the bed, that he’d searched for things on the bedside table. She also deduced that he’d stopped at the door for a few seconds as he left, because there was a pause in the usual prolonged creak of a board in the threshold.

  Mom took a tray out from the oven.

  “¡Molletes!” the twins squealed when they saw the toasted rolls with beans and cheese. Sitting opposite Melissa, they touched her hand to share the good news with her.

  Iris was biting her thumbnail, waiting for Dad to return to the kitchen.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked when she saw him appear.

  “Nothing, his leg was hurting,” he said. “He needed a little more medicine.”

  He sat down, avoiding more questions from Iris. He rubbed his hands while Mom placed the hot tray on the table, on top of a folded cloth. “Delicious, huh?”

  “Very!” the twins said.

  “How’s my bedroom?” Melissa asked.

  “Fine, honey, fine.”

  “And my rocks?”

  “Your rocks are rocks.” Dad burned himself on the cheese when he bit into his mollete. “How are they going to be?”

  Melissa consoled Gregory with a stroke. “And where am I going to sleep?”

  “I got the sofa ready for you,” Mom said. “You’ll be very comfortable.”

  “I know, but I’m supposed to sleep with Marlon tonight. Gregory’s been with me all day, so it’s his turn on the shelf overnight. And Marlon knows it’s his turn in the bed. There’s an order, Mom.”

  “Well, honey, you’ll have to skip the order for a day.” She chose a mollete from the tray. “They’re rocks. Rocks. They don’t know anything.” She offered her daughter the toast she’d taken.

  “I don’t want any.” Melissa slumped back into the chair, her arms crossed.

  When Mom tried to leave the mollete on her plate, Melissa batted it away, making her mother brush her elbow against the hot baking tray. The bread fell on the table, and Mom clutched her arm with a groan.

  “OK, that’s enough!” Dad yelled.

  Mom used ice to soothe the burn.

  “Nobody goes near the door to that bedroom. Understood?” Dad fixed his eyes on Melissa, then Iris. “No-bo-dy. Not within a yard of that door.”

  The twins shook their heads, several times.

  “We don’t want to. He frightens us.” Daisy breathed in sharply, alarmed at something. She shared whatever her worry was with her sister. “Is he going to steal our bead drawings?” they asked at the same time.

  “Of course he’s not,” said Mom.

  “But they’re works of art, worth a lot.”

  “I know”—Mom smiled—“but that boy’s not going to go into your room.”

  The twins wiped their foreheads and sighed. They bit into their molletes, relieved. Melissa ate hers after all, but she did so looking out the window, ignoring her family as she gazed at the darkness outside. She was longing to tell Needles, Pins, and Thorns what had happened.

  Rose washed the last fork and left it to dry. She returned the clean tray to the oven, then undid the knot at the back of her apron. Folding it, she put it down beside the stove. She turned off the light and left the kitchen.

  In the living room she saw Melissa peering out the window onto the porch, with one hand on the glass. Rose approached her daughter from behind, without disturbing her. She had always wanted to be able to enjoy moments of peace with her middle daughter the way she did the smell of the twins’ hair the day after their bath. But Melissa’s melancholic mood worried her too much for that to be possible. She didn’t like Melissa’s nostalgia for things she’d never seen.

  “Will you be OK in here?”

  Melissa closed the blinds as if her mother’s voice had broken the fascination the night landscape held for her. What a second earlier seemed to be a source of serenity, immersing her in those thoughts Rose had never been able to decipher, had become irrelevant in her presence. Melissa turned and replied with a nod, going around her to reach the sofa.

  “It’s not for long,” Rose said. “You’ll be back in your room soon, and then you can sleep with whichever rock you want.”

  Melissa held her stone close to her mouth. “Now she says it’s not for long,” she whispered.

  She tucked in the sheet before lying down. She left a space for the stone between her body and the backrest.

  “Good night, Gregory,” she said. “Good night, Mom.”

  Rose kissed her on the temple. “Good night, honey,” she whispered in Melissa’s ear. “I love you so much.”

  Before leaving, she stopped at the window at the back of the house. The cross standing in the earth filled her with anguish, with love. She thought of Rick tied up in the bed, of his eyes.

  “Shall I close these blinds for you as well?”

  “No, leave it open,” Melissa replied without opening her eyes. “So Edelweiss feels closer.”

  Rose let go of the rod. She sent a kiss beyond the glass before leaving the living room. On the floor upstairs, she found the bill she’d taken out of the jar. She put it away, ashamed at how she’d lied to Iris.

  Elmer came out of Melissa’s bedroom and locked the door. Rose asked him about the boy.

  “The pills have kicked in.” Her husband pressed his hands together and positioned them at the underside of his tilted head.

  Iris came out of the bathroom. “How is he?” She looked at Rose, then at Elm
er. “Is he better?”

  Her father nodded.

  Rose opened the twins’ door to make sure they were sleeping. They were breathing in unison in their beds, in the dark, the room a space of total calm. Rose closed the door, and Elmer locked it from the outside.

  Iris made a face. “What’s that about?”

  “That’s peace of mind,” Elmer said.

  “And you lock your door from the inside, too. Unless you want us to do it for you.”

  Iris went into her bedroom and closed the door.

  Rose waited a few seconds.

  “I can’t hear the lock,” she said. She waited a while longer. “I can’t hear it.”

  There was a metallic click on the other side of the handle. She pictured her daughter turning the key grumpily to make a louder sound.

  “That’s better,” Rose said into the wood. “We’re doing it to protect you.”

  With her husband, she went into their bedroom as they did any other night. Like any other night, they brushed their teeth at the same time, the two of them in front of the mirror. They each undressed on their own side of the bed. They said nothing to one another throughout the process, but that could happen on any night. Elmer went over to the switch to turn off the light, making sure the bedroom door was open, the handle touching the wall.

  As she did every night, Rose sat on the edge of the mattress, took some lotion from the bedside table drawer, and spread it over her forearms. That was the moment she burst into tears.

  Elmer slid over the bed. He took the bottle from her hands and made her lie down, with her back to him. He made a nest with his arms into which she curled up.

  “They’re my daughters,” she said.

  “Of course they are,” he whispered in her ear.

  A gecko on the ceiling of the porch caught a mosquito with its tongue. On the ground, a mouse fled from the menacing rustle of a bush, scampering along the sand, dodging cacti and other spiny plants. The moonlight gave the rocks a silvery quality and the sand a metallic color that transformed the desert into a galactic landscape.